part of left pulmonary artery (left), part of right pulmonary artery (right)

thyroid, cricoid, arytenoid, corniculate and cuneform cartilages

larynx intrinsic muscles (not cricothyroid muscle)

Additional Information

Additional Information - Content shown under this heading is not part of the material covered in this class. It is provided for those students who would like to know about some concepts or current research in topics related to the current class page.

Other Sensory Systems

The links below are to additional information providing background about each of the sensory systems. Only hearing is covered in today's class.

Neural Crest

During this period neural crest cells migrate into the pharyngeal arches and other head locations, and have an important contribution to many different head structures. Neural crest cells at other levels contribute to body many structures. There are also many developmental abnormalities associated with abnormal neural crest development and/or migration. This topic is beyond the scope of the current class.

The embryo figure shows colonization of the head and pharyngeal arches by diencephalic, anterior and posterior mesencephalic, and rhombencephalic neural crest cells (NCCs), as indicated by the colour code. The diagram is representative human embryos, although the NCC migratory pathways might differ slightly in different species. The skull drawings show contributions of NCC populations to cranial skeletal elements of humans, based on NCC fate-mapping studies and on extrapolation of avian and mouse data to known homologues in the human.

Some bones, including the squamosal (SQ), alisphenoid (AS), and pterygoid (PT), are shown with mixed contribution from different NCC populations. Note that in mammals the frontal (FR) and parietal (PA) bones have been reported to be of neural crest and mesodermal origin, respectively.

There has been controversy about the neural crest embryonic contribution to the parietal region. A recent transcriptional analysis of second trimester human cranial compartments[1] suggests that "a gene expression signature of neural crest origin still exists in frontal and metopic compartments while gene expression of parietal and sagittal compartments is more similar to mesoderm."